How Organizations Can Measure and Amplify the Full Spectrum of Employee Motivation

Ani
Hi, and welcome to the Somatic Coaching Academy podcast. Hey, Brian.

Brian
Hello, Ani. How are you today? I’m doing excellent, and you?

Ani
I’m good, and I’m excited to talk about motivation today on episode 51. This is episode 51. Today, we’re talking about how organizations can measure and amplify full spectrum of employee motivation. Full spectrum, boy.

Brian
The full spectrum of motivation.

Ani
That’s a big thing right there.

Brian
But a lot of people didn’t know there’s a full spectrum of motivation.

Ani
Just a teeny weeny bit of motivation, not just a little bit. What do you mean full spectrum?

Brian
Well, the full spectrum of motivation is when we are able to measure, which we’re going to talk about today, the order of people’s motivators, the intensity of their motivational elements, the level of satisfaction of their motivational elements, like how well does the environment match and meet and support their motivators, and then what level of opposition is there internally or externally in themselves or with other people in teams and relationships with their motivators?

Ani
That is a full spectrum. We do a number of assessments here at the Somatic Coaching Academy podcast. We’re going to be referencing one of the assessments that we provide here called the Motivational Maps. If you’re trying to figure out more information about that on our website, it’s somaticcoachingacademy.com. Then you go to ‘Explore our programs’ and scroll down and you’ll see information about assessments. And you can find more information there. For today, why is employee motivation such a challenging problem to fix, Brian?

Brian
It’s interesting. You look around and everyone’s trying to fix it. Whether you’re looking at articles coming out of Harvard Business Review, Forbes. I’m on a listserv, too. Every day, I get a Google listserv of all the motivation stuff. The pile is so deep around engagement numbers and those kinds of things. It’s been forever. It’s been for a long time.

Ani
We’ve been trying to change this for a long time.

Brian
I think as employers are always trying to stoke the fire a little bit more from their employees. How do we help our employees become more productive, more efficient? There’s been all kinds of ways this has been tried over the years, some ways, really, really horrible ways, other ways better than others. It still seems like there’s a lag in the motivational environment. It was interesting, actually, how motivated people were in health care when the pandemic happened, right? Yeah. But there was an external crisis that moved people forward to get a lot of stuff done. Then, of course, there was a massive burnout epidemic that has occurred. We’re still in the wake of that after the pandemic as well. That’s all stuff we can talk about with motivation. But why is it so hard to change? Because that’s what we’re asking, right? Well, I think in general, people can feel pretty disconnected at work. They can feel disconnected between who they are personally, their personal values, and what they bring to work and what they’re doing at work. So that can be oftentimes very, very challenging. Motivation, after all, just the word motivation, if we want to break down the definition of it, means a reason for moving.

Brian
Motivation. Motive is reason. And -ation, whenever you put that at the end of a word, it means in motion. Motivation is really a reason for moving. If we think about you’re at work, what’s really your reason for doing those spreadsheets? Which is really your reason for delivering those packages? What’s your reason for writing a report for the board meeting or whatever that happens to be that you’re doing. As humans, we are always baked in reason and meaning, rather. Not reason, like reasoning. The reason. The reason for, the meaning. What’s the meaning behind? If we’re disconnected from that, even in small ways, it actually will reduce the amount of energy that we’re able to bring to a specific task, right?

Ani
Yeah. Well, a lot of organizations, classically, have tried to solve the motivation problem intellectually. I love that we’re having this conversation because we’re actually It’s like a, duh, when we talk about it, when we really bring it up, but we don’t think of it like this. Motivation is a body thing. -ation happens in the body. Movement happens in the body. I think that intellectual approaches can get a spark and get some short term movement sometimes in order to move the body towards more motivation. But really, it’s such a challenge to find that sustained motivation, sustainable motivation for me to be able to continue to move, continue to motivate, and continue to find that reason that mattered. Yeah.

Brian
Meaning is both collective and also individual, too, by the way. On one hand, I think companies look to hire people who have a similar value set to the company. That’s really, really important. If you have someone working for your company that has a diametrically opposed value set to the company’s values, that’s just not going to work. We try to hire people that have as close a value set as possible. Here’s the thing, even if it’s almost like a perfect overlap between a person’s value set and a company value set, the person still still has an individual and unique motivational profile within themselves that still needs to be fed. I really think in organizations, leaders and managers either can’t take the time, don’t take the time, or are not afforded the time to really understand what individually motivates their people. Because, again, if that’s not fed, the person will not stay at the company for the whole time unless they feel seen, they feel heard, they feel valued. By measuring motivation with the motivational maps, gives a really accurate look into how a person makes meaning and then turns that into action or into work.

Ani
I think you bring up an important point that we’ve talked about a number of times. We were just talking about it on the last episode, actually, around making sure that you’re solving the right problem. I think a lot of times in organizations, leaders are trying to solve a problem, but the real problem is that if they just took some time to understand as individuals what the motivation is for people, they wouldn’t even have some of the problems that they have. We need to say, too, that what’s the statistic? 80% of people don’t know what motivates them? Because we think we can just ask people, but we can’t.

Brian
Yeah, 80% of people… When someone takes the motivational map profile, there are nine, we call primary motivational elements that get organized out in the assessment. We’ll talk about those in just a bit. But 80% of people are not able to identify their top three motivators. And only 2% of people are able to identify their top three motivators in order. And we’ve done this- I was going to say we’ve proven this actually. And big conferences with 300 people in a conference room, over 300 people in a conference room. Everyone’s taking the motivational map, and then we ask them that question, and exactly that percentage of hands come up. Statistics holds of who was able to identify their top three, who was able to identify their top three in order. And it’s interesting, actually, Ani, people are more accurate identifying their lowest motivator than they are their top three motivators. So most people are more accurate about identifying what does not motivate them than what does motivate them, which is interesting, too, when you think about how someone goes through their work day that we’re actually spending more time paying attention to what we don’t like than what we do like.

Ani
Well, that reminds me that one of the things that we hear from leaders that’s a big problem is complaining and that negativity. How do we stop people from that? But that reminds me, what are signs that motivation is a problem? What’s the check engine light for people, for the leaders?

Brian
There’s obvious signs and there’s subtle signs. Most people are pretty familiar with the obvious signs are. The trouble is that we even let it get to that point where there’s obvious signs. What are the obvious signs? Well, absenteeism is an obvious sign. When people just are not showing up to work. Presenteeism. Presenteeism, like that word, where people are at work, but they’re not actually there. Yeah.

Ani
I’ve got a tie around that word, too.

Brian
Their body is at work, but they’re not engaged at work, they’re not paying attention. They’re not actually doing their work functions thing. That sometimes is even a bigger problem, absenteeism thing. Project deadlines are being missed. The team isn’t knocking work out in an appropriate order. Things aren’t getting passed down the line if you have multiple people working on it. Those are all obvious problems. Client delivery isn’t happening. There’s client conflicts or client issues that are going on.

Ani
Some of that stuff you’re talking about, we hope we never get to that place, but a lot of- But it does a lot of the time.

Brian
It does, a lot of time. Right? And so Gallup did a survey in 2023. And these numbers, again, they seem so dismal that globally, globally, only 23% of workers globally are engaged in their work. Really? Like, only one out of four workers. Now, in the US, it’s a little better. It’s like 33%, but still not great. Only one out of three employees who works in the US is actually motivated and engaged in their work. Disengagement can cost a company between 18 and 34% of an employee’s salary. If you have someone earning $100,000 a year, that’s their salary, and they’re disengaged, that’s actually costing the company $34,000 a year just for that- It’s a very expensive problem – just for that individual. It’s a wide-reaching problem that happens all across the sectors. Here’s the thing, though, companies actually still do not spend enough time, money, resources to solve that problem. We’re so focused on, let’s get the new tech in there. Let’s get the new AI stuff in there. Let’s become more efficient. The problem is we begin automating people more and expecting more of them without actually fueling the reason for showing up to work to begin with.

Ani
It reminds me of expecting a car to run on a quarter of a tank of gas. I mean, for you and I, we start to get to a quarter of a tank and we’re trying to find the nearest gas station. But this is like, we continue. People are depleted or unmotivated and depleted, and we still expect them to run on high octane. What are some options to solve. I mean, it feels like it’s so unsolvable.

Brian
Yeah, right?

Ani
It feels like a pretty big- It’s very prevalent. No one’s been able to figure it out.

Brian
there’s a couple of different options, more than a couple of different options to solve this. Now, most companies that when we talk to them, they’re like, Hey, let’s just do a workshop. Can we just do a three-hour workshop on Friday afternoon to change all the motivation of all of our people?

Ani
Run the assessment, tell us about them.

Brian
That’s something you can try or bring in a motivational speaker. Let’s bring in a motivational speaker. That’ll get everybody fired up for a day and a half thing. Those things tend to not get as much out of them as that you’d hope that you’d like. Because of behavior change and culture change, that takes time to be able to work through. I’m not saying they’re completely invaluable, but we have to be clear about our expectation of how much that’s actually going to move the needle. Sure.

Ani
Are you just looking for a boost? Are you looking for actual change?

Brian
Yeah. That’s one option. You can also do these really expensive engagement surveys where you’re sending out surveys to your employees and getting all kinds of thoughts back from them about how engaged they feel, what would help them feel more engaged, these long surveys, and then get the data back and do nothing with it because it’s not really clear.

Ani
Right. It’s not really clear. We just talked about how 80% of people probably aren’t able to articulate well on those anyway.

Brian
What motivates them anyway. But companies do do these really in-depth. They spend a lot of time, a lot of resources doing these engagement surveys and with the expectation that doing the survey itself is actually going to solve a problem. Then when they see the results, then the results sometimes just get slid in a drawer and they say, “We’ll do something about that when we have time and money to do it, which It never actually happens.”

Ani
See that that’s a good… I think that’s going to be a good solution when I don’t know of a better solution. Correct.

Brian
It might feel like it scratches an itch. Hey, we’re doing something, but you’re still not moving the needle. Then the problem is still going to be there again.

Ani
You just spend a bunch of time, energy, money doing that.

Brian
I’m about getting stuff done and getting a result. That’s what we’re all about here. It’s like, let’s get a detainable, practical result. Let’s get after it and do it.

Ani
And win-win solutions here, too. That’s really important to us, win-win-win solution. So win for the company, a win for the worker, and a win for everybody, all the customers. That’s really important to us. And possible Always possible.

Brian
Yeah. And so that’s why we really believe that the best solution is to bring in an outside expert that has the knowledge, the skill, the tools, and the capabilities to actually help the organization get the that they want. I mean, that’s really the best investment. Bringing an outside expert that’s proving they can do it, that has the results, has the tools and the skills, and can deliver the results that the organization wants.

Ani
A lot of times organizations turn to internal people, too. What do you have to say about where organizations turn?

Brian
A lot of organizations do turn to internal teams, learn development teams internally, which isn’t a horrible option, but there are some drawbacks to it. Number one, those teams tend to be stretched already with what they’re already doing. When you’re talking about a motivational initiative to actually understand what motivates your people inside the organization, and then to create and then to have an assessment that actually accurately shows that so you can get that information clean out, and then be able to interpret that information back to both the employee groups, the teams, and the leadership team as well, to be able to create a cohesive plan and able to Organize some goals around what you’re going to do with that. Internally, oftentimes, it’s just not the bandwidth internally to do that, number one. Number two, the learning and development team is inside. They’re swimming in the same water as everybody else within the organization. To think that you’re going to take them out of the organization to change that goes back into the organization. Any change that goes in the organization is also affecting their teams and their groups. There’s a conflict of interest in there sometimes as well with culture change.

Brian
Now, you do need champions inside of the organization anytime you’re doing culture change in initiative, but you also absolutely need external expert outside support to be able to take a really good objective look at what’s going on inside of the organization. Again, someone has the tools and capacity to do that.

Ani
Yeah. Yeah. And how important to get that outside perspective. Like you said, everybody’s swimming in the same water there. What you’re talking about seems like it’s really costly and huge to fix potentially. So how much time and money are we actually talking in terms of what organizations would I have to invest?

Brian
Yeah. Well, actually, I think it partly, Ani, that depends a little bit about who the outside expert is that you’re bringing in to do that change. Now, you could bring in a big consultancy. So some companies bring in these big consultancy to try to create those changes. Now, the challenge with that is that these big consultancy, oftentimes, you’re going to turn this into a massive science project. Because they have all kinds of other things that they need to do and all the other communications and scheduling that they need to create. And then also, oftentimes, the people that work for those consultancy, they’re a little green still. They’re out of college. Again, I’m all about giving people opportunities and growing, but you have to ask, is that the best match for your organization and your company? A big behemoth consultancy probably isn’t going to be nimble. They’re not going to be able to customize what you need for your organization. They’re probably going to deliver it more in a package thing, and it’s like a take it or leave it thing. Then people show up that really don’t have necessarily experience and also the connection to the work yet because they haven’t cultivated it so much yet.

Brian
Where the other side of that is to bring in a small boutique consultancy or firm and someone who is more nimble, who can customize, who can actually spend time with your employees, with your leadership team to create a plan, again, that’s going to move the needle forward. It’s not just a logo that’s coming in to do it. It’s actually a person with a face and experts on their team to be able to do it.

Ani
And expertise and experience. I think that’s one of the biggest reasons why boutique firms are so powerful is because you really do have that expertise. It’s very potent is the word that’s coming to me.

Brian
Yeah, and precise, too. It’s potent, but it’s also very precise because the smaller firms can be very surgical about how they’re doing things. It’s not a big blanket, and it’s not already out of the box.

Ani
It’s a little bit like a paradox, actually, because you might not think that about boutique kinds of firms, but it’s true. The precision that they’re able to execute just is different. To really think, I like that you’re talking about this difference between the big firms and more of a boutique firm and the results that you might expect.

Brian
Yeah. I think you asked me before about what are the costs of this? We already mentioned that the cost of disengagement. 18% to 34% of a person’s salary of a disengaged employee salary is completely lost. Let’s just say that. Do the math. How many employees do you have in your company? If you’re in the US and 66% of them are disengaged, then look at the salaries of that 66% of disengaged people, and then look at between 18 and 34% of that income is just walking out the door.

Ani
This is mind-blowing numbers to think that this is really the problem underneath a lot of problems that are not getting solved. You have money that’s wasted. Exactly.

Brian
Take a moment to do that. Just pull out a napkin right now as you listen to the podcast and look at your salaries and your percentages and figure out how much money you’re losing because of disengagement in your organization. Let’s just say that. Now, I do have some statistics here I want to just share with you. Again, from Gallup. What Gallup says is that when you are able to create a more engaged culture by using programs and plans that have been vetted and able to do that, successful engagement, reinitiatives, motivational reinitiatives, you can improve your customer loyalty by 10%. There’s that win-win-win. Yeah, right? There’s a win-win-win. The customer also wins when those happen. You get 23% higher profitability. Do these numbers, too. How much more money would come in if you had 10% higher customer loyalty? Go ahead and put 23% on top of your revenue numbers right now. That would be an ad win for you. You get 18% higher productivity from teams and from your people. You get 14% higher productivity for records and evaluations, a response back from people around things. Interesting. Okay. So that happens. You get between 18% and 43% less employee turnover.

Ani
Wow. Then That’s expensive. Yeah.

Brian
What’s a cost to replace a highly skilled employee? Sometimes it’s 2-10 times their salary. Even to replace a lower-level employee, you’re still talking between 75% to 100% of someone’s salary. Just do the math on that. What if you add between 18 and 43% less turnover in your organization? Those numbers are pretty widespread, but it’s based on a couple of things. It’s based on the size of the organization, but it’s also based on the current turnover rate of the organization already. If you have a high turnover organization already, then it’s more like a lower number, 18%. If it’s a lower turnover organization, you’re already retaining people, you actually retain a higher number of those people. You’re actually building on what you already have around it. You see improvements in productivity, client engagement. You see improvements in retainability with your employees. You see ups all around with that. What’s the time commitment around this? A lot of people say, Well, how long is this going to take? Again, it depends. It depends. Again, how big of a bite you want to take out of it, how big of the organization is. These are all the kinds of conversations we have with people about this.

Brian
To, again, be very precise and be very specific about how this is going to impact the plan for your organization. It’s not just one number from a big consultancy. It’s a very precise conversation that you can get in organizations we’ve worked with, you can get a pretty good bump forward in about six months of work of doing the assessment and doing the programs that we have organized based on assessment. You can also do longer term initiatives that happen between 18 and 24 months that are longer for larger organizations, for deeper culture change, for those kinds of things. It really depends on the time investment is a big deal around that. These can be organized all kinds of ways, too, by the way, in terms of phases, how we do a phase-oriented approach to do the assessments, and then the trainings, and the coaching, and the consulting that comes out of that. Typically, the investment is, again, depending on this time frame, somewhere between $25,000 to $750,000 is a pretty common investment for this. $25,000 is pretty much really on that low side, and then you go much higher if it’s a longer term investment. But that’s really going to be detailed based on number of people in the organization, the systems that need to be put into place within the organization, those sorts of things.

Ani
One of the things that’s occurring to me is how, I don’t remember the statistic, but there’s some information out there about how companies like have to reinvent themselves even more frequently nowadays. This thing sounds like a really important thing to bake into that reinvention because having a company culture in a way that you are as a company that’s based on motivation is just going to continue to provide results no matter how you choose to reinvent yourself in the future. Yeah. All these things sound great, and I’m sure there’s problems that come up as associated with some of these- Oh, sure. That you’ve seen. Resistence.

Brian
Resistence to change. Listen to our last podcast we just did, it was on resistance to change. Where are the risks around doing these kinds of programs? What we’ve seen as one of the primary ones is employees just don’t buy in to the program. Typically because they don’t see it as personally valuable to them, which is a really cool thing about the Motivational Maps, because when we do these with people, they light up. They get so excited. People get so excited about understanding themselves better, especially from a motivational perspective. Again, we do a lot of different assessments here at the Somatic Coaching Academy. Motivational maps, there’s something really sparky about it.

Ani
Yeah, we get people on team calls and they’re so good.

Brian
They’re like, Oh, my God. I understand that. Really, man, that puts a whole exclamation point on me and what drives me and what lights me up.

Ani
You know what else I see in those calls is they get really endeared to the company for providing that opportunity for them. It’s just a lovely… They feel like they’re getting a gift.

Brian
Yeah. And if the leadership team takes the information that they learn about the person and actually does something with it, then what employees say is they really feel seen, valued, and heard. They really feel like they are seen now as an individual that is doing things to help support the organization. It really brings into alignment not only the values alignment with the organization, but also it helps someone to feel value aligned within themselves.

Ani
That is I think this is probably the number one complaint that we hear from whatever client or student we’re working with is this desire to be seen and heard, and it’s not happening. It comes up constantly.

Brian
It’s core.

Ani
It is so core. I think it’s an exciting time that people can actually articulate that because I think in the past, people haven’t been able to articulate it, and it came out in all kinds of different ways. That’s what they were trying to really say. They just didn’t really know it. But nowadays, we have enough awareness to be able to articulate that, and it’s so cool. Then when somebody meets you with that and you really do feel seen and heard, it just, again, core. It just gets right to the core of what it feels like to be a human It’s very cool.

Brian
Leaders and managers really have to not pooh-pooh that. If you want to be a leader, if as a leader, you are committed, you are committed to your company crushing it out there, then this is probably one of the most important things for you to do. Don’t pooh-pooh it. We can be like, Oh, that’s soft, or people don’t need to… you’re going to be ruinous. It’s going to be ruinous to your organization. If there’s any secret pill, I don’t really believe in secret pills. I believe in formulas because it’s always more than one thing. But if there was one thing, it’s seeing, valuing, listening to your employees in such that they know that that’s what just happened, that they feel heard, they feel valued, they feel seen. That will build the success of a foundation of a company in a really more sustainable way more than anything else.

Ani
There’s nothing soft or weird about that. There’s no better time, money, energy saving tactic on the planet.

Brian
Because any of these change initiatives, if they feel like top down mandates to change something, they’re always going to be resisted by employees. It’s like, We’re changing something because you’re screwing up. We’re changing something because you’re not doing good enough. You might not be saying that directly, but if there’s any flavor of that, then if you’re We’re changing something because there’s something inadequate about what’s going on with our employees and teams, that’s always going to be met with resistance and resentment and challenge and pushback and all those kinds of things, which is why the motivational maps are so cool because people are seeing it as a way to be seen themselves and to be able to understand each other better within the organization.

Ani
One of our tenets here is that ‘nothing’s wrong with you’ and to ‘look for the health that already exists because it must’. That’s, I think, what you’re talking about. When you approach people and systems and organizations from that place, anything can grow. Awesome stuff happens.

Brian
The most important investment that any leader can make in the organization is really is in their people. I know technology and AI and those kinds of things are also really important investments, but people. Got to have people around to actually run those things and work those things and manage those things and engage with those things.

Ani
Is there anything that you want to talk about measurement? Because I know it feeds your inner nerdiness and also really important with… It really is important, especially when we’re talking about so many people. How do people measure?

Brian
The full spectrum motivation. Let’s talk about the motivational maps a little bit. Motivational maps, when there have been user ratings of the maps, this is pretty interesting stuff, they’re rated as 92% easy. 92% of people say they’re easy. It’s like an easy assessment to take. I love that. 90% people say it’s easy to take the assessment. Especially in this day and age. Not laborious to do. 95% of people say it’s accurate. How about that? 95% of people say, even if they didn’t guess their own motivators, when they see their results, they say, Oh, my God, that explains me so much.

Ani
We have so seen that. When teams share their motivational maps with each other, also the understanding is like, Oh, now I understand. Yeah.

Brian
And when they ask individuals, teams, and organizations, they rate the motivational map assessment as 97% useful. That’s a big deal. They say, This is a really useful tool, which to me says it’s effective and it’s worth doing. So let’s just put that out there right now. We already talked about the full spectrum of motivation. When someone takes a motivational map assessment, which again, just takes a few minutes, it’s easy to do. What it will do is we will spit out some information about the nine primary motivational elements that we all have. We all have all nine, but they are all in different orders of importance, different levels of intensity, different degrees of satisfaction, and different degrees of opposition. That unique profile will get spit out, and we’ll be able to start understanding what that individual’s full spectrum of motivation is. We get an overall motivational number for each individual as well. How overall motivated this person is, how satisfied they are with each one of the motivational elements, what their top three are, what are the things that really fire them up, what are the things that might also indicate what they’re really good at or really desiring or willing to do?

Brian
Also tell us what people are resistant to do and what they just won’t do, even if that’s a part of their job description. That’s one of my favorite parts. Yeah, and it’s not because they’re bad people. It’s just they’re just not motivated to do it. It actually might be something in their job description that’s just simply not motivated to do. Then when we work with employers who find that out and we go, “Oh, can we just move some things around a little bit and actually offload this thing to the other person who’s motivated to do it?” Wow. Then all of a sudden, the overall team, the overall organization gets a lot more motivated.

Ani
Yeah, that’s so fun to watch that happen. Sometimes it’s really easy stuff.

Brian
Yeah. Maybe let’s just really quick talk about the nine motivators. Okay. There’s, again, lots of books written on motivation, different what four things are important to motivate people, what are the three most important motivators? A lot of people have a lot of things to say about it, and I think that’s really great. What our experience is using motivational maps is we’re actually looking at nine areas. So Some people are motivated primarily by impact, primarily by the impact they make in other people’s lives. Other people are primarily motivated by freedom and autonomy, their own freedom, their own autonomy, their own ability to make decisions for themselves and for their job functions thing. Some people are really motivated by creativity, uniqueness, innovation. You’d want these people more in the innovation side of things because that’s what they’re naturally going to be inclined to do. Certain people are primarily motivated by control, a sense of control and responsibility. Other people are motivated by expertise, or another one is affluence. Then we have connection, we have recognition, and we have security. Those are the nine motivators. Again, they all show up in different orders. When we read those out, some people think of somebody else and they’re going, Oh, that’s them.

Brian
But be careful It’s all about trying to pin someone based on one thing because the way these motivators work together, they can show up in subtle ways that we think it’s one of the areas, but it’s actually a combination of how some of the other ones work together.

Ani
I just saw that on a motivational map I took for myself recently. I retook mine recently and saw one come up and was like, Oh, I did not see that coming. But then when I really looked at it, I was like, That’s exactly what’s happening.

Brian
Yeah, exactly what’s happening. When you do this for a whole team or a whole organization, Ani, what’s really cool is you get the individual motivators, but then you also see the overall pattern of motivators for the whole organization. You can actually tell overall, what are the primary motivators for the whole organization, which then allows you to start to interview and attract people based on the motivators of the organization. Go back to what we said at the beginning of this podcast, saying that in order to have a really highly motivated employee, you need actually two things. They need to be value alignment with the organization organizational values, number one. Number two, their individual motivators need to be fed on a regular basis. So when we do a map of a whole organization, it’ll actually show up with the motivational character of the organization will show up. And then you can actually start to hire people based on that motivational character, which brings people in a greater values alignment with your organization itself. So that’s huge.

Ani
Yeah. I’m also thinking about some companies where we’ve mapped customer sets, which has been cool and been able to see motivation for the customer set and also how that fits in with the organization itself. This is so fascinating and fun.

Brian
Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s one of the things we love doing is helping sales teams understand the motivators of their customers. When you understand what motivates the customers, it can start to gear how we are talking to our customers about things that would serve them better. It starts to cut through some of the fog of of understanding of why would this product or service really benefit me when you can start to speak to it through their motivators. We love helping sales teams with the motivational maps. It’s actually, I think, one of the best uses of the maps that we found. One of them, highly effective in terms of profit groups. That area is really awesome.

Ani
And again, one of the things that’s so important to us is helping people to be seen and heard. And then sales doesn’t have to feel mucky and icky or pushy or It doesn’t have to waste energy. It can really be a super fun process of finding the just right matches and win-win-win solution. Yeah.

Brian
So one of the most exciting things that we’ve seen by using the motivational maps with organizations and in Individuals, by the way, because you get the printouts for individuals, teams, organizations. They get so much information and data from this, is we’ve seen improvements in individual motivation by 160%. We’ve helped to improve individual motivation by 160%. The change that brings to someone’s attitude and energy levels is just tremendous. We’ve also helped organizations improve their engagement and ROI by 715% by using these tools. We’ve got a lot of great results with it. This is an amazing assessment. We love getting it out there in the world and also just love helping people feel more motivated and engaged in their lives. That’s a really It’s an important thing.

Ani
Yeah. The stats on that are just so… I don’t know. It brings me so much hope because there’s effective solutions to these things that have been Such big problems. Why do organizations procrastinate on moving forward, Brian? Because it seems like a no-brainer.

Brian
Well, I think most organizations procrastinate because they believe this is less valuable. There’s more obvious things to spend resources on. “We’ve got to get that new tech up and running thing.” “Oh, we’ve got to turn a profit immediately because of our shareholders” if it’s a public company. There seems to be all these kinds of irons, all these fires burning. What I think a lot of organizations don’t realize is the reason those fires are burning is because only 33% of their workforce is actually engaged. Solving the right- You got 100 people working for the company. Only 33 of them are actually working to their fullest capacity. No wonder you have a bunch of fires.

Ani
No kidding. No kidding. Just like we’ve talked about in a lot of episodes, and certainly in the last episode, having an awareness of what you’re looking for helps you then to have an awareness when it shows up that, Oh, that’s the problem I really should be solving. Yeah. Just like when we talk about individuals and solving the nervous system problem rather than all the superficial problems that come up, this is actually just like that.

Brian
If you’re really were asking this question about, Well, what happens when people, when organizations just procrastinated on doing this? It’s pretty simple. They keep losing money, they keep losing employees, and they keep losing their minds. I mean, it’s like that’s the cost. That’s the cost of procrastinating right there.

Ani
Keep your sanity and do something different.

Brian
Keep your sanity and do something different.

Brian
Well said. What would next steps to solve this problem look like, Brian?

Brian
Well, that’s pretty easy. I mean, for us, it’s like, find us at the Somatic Coaching Academy, go to the assessments section of the website, check out the motivational maps there, and send us an email at [email protected], or give us a call.

Ani
Yeah, absolutely. If you go to our programs page, you’re going to be able to see a bunch of different things we do, including how we work with organizations and including our assessments. Hey, if you’re just like, “We just want to talk”, we’ve got email, we’ve got phone calls, so look us up and have a conversation about whether or not it’s right for your organization. This was such a fun conversation, Brian, and I’m glad that you were able to bring your expertise. I know the expertise is something that motivates you and your creativity, which is also something that motivates you, allows you to take that expertise and come up with creative solutions. It’s been so cool to watch how you’ve brought the motivational maps into organizations, into people’s lives to be able to create change. Thanks.

Brian
It’s been fun. You’re welcome. It’s been super fun.

Ani
Awesome. Thanks for this episode. We’re really look forward to seeing you on the next episode, which I believe is our almost our one year anniversary, actually. We have one more. Almost, yeah. We have a faculty lounge before, so we get to talk to a special guest next time. We’ll see you on the next episode of the Somatic Coaching Academy podcast. Bye-bye. Have a great day.